Sunday, November 22

Islamic State recruiters lie in their teeth to European Muslims

Jurgen Todenhofer, a journalist who spent 10 days last year with Islamic State and lived to tell the tale, spoke to RT about his adventure in an interview published yesterday. His information about where IS gets its ammunition could be 'dated' (see below) but his general advice about the best way to defeat IS is still sound. And what he says about the extent to which IS recruiters lie to young European Muslims, and why those men make such easy marks, is an eye-opener. I have only one quibble with his remarks in that regard: his use of the term "brainwashed." I'm not an expert but from Todenhofer's account, I'd say that simple behavior modification techniques that are standard indoctrination procedure for predatory cults are used on the young men. Read the interview if you have an interest in such matters but here I want to quote the part that relates to weapons and ammunition and some of his advice for countering IS:

Naturally, the militants did not tell him everything, yet Todenhofer had the impression that Islamic State is still getting money and weapons from Gulf monarchies such as Saudi Arabia.

The weapons are also bought on the black market, where European-made guns are available as well, sometimes those supplied to the Kurdish Peshmerga or the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

“They told me,’Even if we don’t conquer these weapons, we can buy them, because everything has a price. Most of our ammunition we get from the Free Syrian Army.’”

This is the ammunition that Americans supplied to the FSA, which is now not important, or those groups which said they belong to the FSA, Todenhofer said.

[...]

To create real problems for ISIS, the West should do several things: stop the delivery of weapons, ammunition and money from the Gulf monarchies and close the Turkish border used to transit new fighters to ISIS, Todenhofer said, recalling how easy it was to cross the Syrian-Turkish border.

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